The Importance Of Comfort During Meditation

A lot has been written as to the benefits that a meditation practice holds: increased mental clarity, decreased stress and anxiety, and an improved outlook on life, to name just a few. That said, to put it bluntly, meditation sucks if you aren’t comfortable. Despite all the potentially challenging things one might encounter during meditation, who wants to focus inward if they aren’t comfortable?

Checkout this comical but well intended Ann Arbor post from Susan Scott Morales on the necessity for comfort during meditation. Sharing her own experience of attempting to meditate in her bathtub, Morales reminds us that although the tub might not be the best place to cultivate meditation, the intention is still the same.

Meditating in the tub is simply uncomfortable. I tried different sitting postures. Lying down wasn’t an option because I thought I’d fall asleep. I tried different techniques. The outcome was always the same: this isn’t comfortable. I suppose I could bring in waterproof pillows so the surface wasn’t so hard, but that seems a little overboard. So why am I even mentioning this experiment? It supports one of my fundamentals of a meditation practice: be comfortable. Then we can be both relaxed and alert.

Read more from Morales on the importance of comfort during meditationhere.

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